intresting never heard of this before

By Ben Hoyle
Newly released papers tell of the cruel end to a mission to destroy a Nazi installation

WHEN five British servicemen on a mission to disrupt Nazi Germany’s nuclear weapons programme crash-landed in Norway in the winter of 1942 they still hoped to escape with their lives.

But documents released yesterday at the National Archives in Kew, southwest London, described how they were betrayed by the villagers they approached for help, interned in a prisoner-of-war camp and then executed under orders from Berlin.

Details of the murders were contained in witness reports compiled for use at a war crimes trial after the end of the Second World War.

The men, all Royal Engineers, had been assigned to Operation Freshman, a mission to destroy a heavy water plant in Rjukan, Norway. It was feared that the plant had a crucial role in Germany’s effort to build the first atomic bomb. A later raid against the plant formed the basis for the 1965 film The Heroes of Telemark, starring Kirk Douglas, Richard Harris and Michael Redgrave.

Most of the crew were killed when their glider crashed in dense November fog. According to the files the mountainside was strewn with wreckage.

But Lance-Corporal Wallis Jackson, 28, and Sappers Frank Bonner, 25, James Blackburn, 21, Thomas White, 23 and John Walsh, 21, survived. Three were injured and the other two walked to the nearest village where they asked the lensmann, or village mayor, for help.

Instead he telephoned the German authorities, who arrested the men and forced them to lead them to the wrecked glider and their wounded comrades. The five were taken to a camp near Oslo, where they were interrogated.

In January 1943, with the war beginning to turn against Germany on the Eastern Front, orders were issued to shoot all commandos as saboteurs.

Together with a sixth British serviceman, Seaman Robert Evans, who had been captured on a separate mission, the five engineers were led into Trandum forest, blindfolded and shot in the head. Their bodies were thrown into a makeshift grave by a German soldier who later boasted about the killings.

Workers at the camp had been sent home just before the summary executions. When they returned they found blood and pieces of flesh in the snow and blood-soaked clothing.

A Norwegian soldier, Kurt Hagedorn, said he had been told that the British squad were to be regarded as saboteurs, as they had civilian clothing underneath their uniforms. “However, I have not seen that,” he said. “They were also alleged to have carried explosives and poison in order to poison our drinking water.”

But in an affidavit, Karl Maria von Behren, a lieutenant-general in the German Army, expressed regret that the men had been killed before he was given a chance to question them. He described the matter as “very painful”. “I could not reconcile it with my conscience and it weighed very heavily on my heart,” he said.

After the war the six bodies were exhumed and given a ceremonial burial near Oslo.

The heavy water plant was later destroyed by Norwegian resistance fighters.

Among other evils which being unarmed brings you it causes you to be despised - Niccolo Machiavelli

http://www.savethebritishforces.org.uk

Ehm, not that I condone the shooting of POW's, but these were commando soldiers on a sabotage mission, they knew fully well what the Germans did with captured commandoes. Hitler's order was known to the British command.
Murder is a bit of harsh verdict considering the rules of engagement that were in use then.

So do you think this shootings were illegal?
I think from a moral point yes, but from a legal point, no.

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Ehm, who researched this article, the "Kommandobefehl" ordering the killing of commandoes was given in October 1942, not 1943

Hitlers Befehl über die Vernichtung von Kommandotrupps und Fallschirmspringern
["Kommandobefehl"]

Vom 18. Oktober 1942

http://www.documentarchiv.de/ns/1942/kommandobefehl.html

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That article is not entirely accurate...

First a group of Norwegian soldiers were dropped in the mountains of Telemark. These reconnoitred and made a rough landing strip for the gliders carrying the main force of Britsh soldiers. Something went horribly wrong that night though. The gliders went off course and people died both on inpact and later.

The Lensmann is not the mayor, but the local police authority. During the war this person would obviously be one loyal to the German occupiers and the Norwegian traitor regime. Contacting him was a fatal mistake and if they had been better briefed they should have known this. They should have tried a local farm instead.

After several months the decision was made to send over more Norwegian soldiers (not resistance fighters as the article claims) instead of British soldiers. I assume this was because Norwegians would have a much larger chance of survival in their homeland. They were also extremely motivated as they were fighting for their motherland.

So, this new team together with the old spearhead carried out the mission and the later sinking of the ferry when the Germans tried to get the heavy water stocks out. After that they also spent many months in the mountains surviving on the land.

>> Together with a sixth British serviceman, Seaman Robert Evans, who had been captured on a separate mission, the five engineers were led into Trandum forest, blindfolded and shot in the head. <<

During my time in the army I spent 6 months in the Southern Dragoon Regiment at Trandum. Every year a large ceremony was held at the execution spot in memory of those who died for Norway.